Vista Won't Add To PC Prices

[Rich Tate]

It looks like Vista won’t be hiking the prices of PC sales, as most places are selling at an average of 10 dollars more than a comparable copy of XP.

At such e-retailers as Newegg.com, the price of so-called OEM editions of Vista -- those sold to smaller-scale system builders as opposed to large computer makers like Dell or Hewlett-Packard -- are on average $10 more than comparable versions of Windows XP.

 

[MeathooK]

Vista's not that much more expensive, but the hardware needed to run it will cost extra

 

[note235]

amen to that

 

[ir0nw0lf]

What people need to watch out for is vendors doing this: quite a few vendors I have seen that sell both the 32 and the 64-bit OEM versions are jacking the price of the 64-bit version higher than the 32-bit version, which to me is BS. One of my two distributors has the exact same price on the 32 and 64-bit versions of the same Vista, the other jacked the 64-bit versions up by $5+ over the 32-bit version.

 

[Ockie]

Vista OEM prices are the same as XP OEM prices and you have more to offer, so I don't think it would raise any prices

 

[masteraleph]

Vista's not that much more expensive, but the hardware needed to run it will cost extra

Not really.

Go take a look at Dell's consumer offerings (for example). Of all their desktops, the majority come with 1GB ram, minimum (the least that anything comes with is 512MB). The same is true of their laptops. And at least according to MS, current Intel integrated GPUs are capable of running Aero.

So no, at this point, very little to no added cost for most consumers buying new, because all of this stuff is already priced in.

 

[spincut]

well i know maingear is upcharging about 50 bucks more for their base configurations with the only difference being the switch from XP home to Vista home to the configuration.

i figured that that was about right though and the upgrade reflected the cost increase.......although that could be because maingear is using the somewhat nicer Home premium version for their base option so that could be why.

 

[dualblade]

Not really.

Go take a look at Dell's consumer offerings (for example). Of all their desktops, the majority come with 1GB ram, minimum (the least that anything comes with is 512MB). The same is true of their laptops. And at least according to MS, current Intel integrated GPUs are capable of running Aero.

So no, at this point, very little to no added cost for most consumers buying new, because all of this stuff is already priced in.

it's nice to see this myth finally put to rest. if vista has done anything, it's insured that even a base machine will be a good one. vista has forced integrated gpu's to be better, which benefits everyone. for those who aren't gamers, there are still benefits in video playback and general windows smoothness